Magnetocrystalline anisotropy of the easy-plane metallic antiferromagnet Fe2As

Kexin Yang, Kisung Kang, Zhu Diao, Manohar H. Karigerasi, Daniel P. Shoemaker, André Schleife, and David G. Cahill
Phys. Rev. B 102, 064415 – Published 18 August 2020
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Abstract

Magnetocrystalline anisotropy is a fundamental property of magnetic materials that determines the dynamics of magnetic precession, the frequency of spin waves, the thermal stability of magnetic domains, and the efficiency of spintronic devices. We combine torque magnetometry and density functional theory calculations to determine the magnetocrystalline anisotropy of the metallic antiferromagnet Fe2As. Fe2As has a tetragonal crystal structure with the Néel vector lying in the (001) plane. We report that the fourfold magnetocrystalline anisotropy in the (001) plane of Fe2As is extremely small, K22=150J/m3 at T=4K, much smaller than the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy of ferromagnetic structure widely used in spintronic devices. K22 is strongly temperature dependent and close to zero at T>150K. The anisotropy K1 in the (010) plane is too large to be measured by torque magnetometry and we determine K1=830kJ/m3 using first-principles density functional theory. Our simulations show that the contribution to the anisotropy from classical magnetic dipole-dipole interactions is comparable to the contribution from spin-orbit coupling. The calculated fourfold anisotropy in the (001) plane K22 ranges from 290 to 280J/m3, the same order of magnitude as the measured value. We used K1 from theory to predict the frequency and polarization of the lowest frequency antiferromagnetic resonance mode and find that the mode is linearly polarized in the (001) plane with f= 670 GHz.

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  • Received 2 May 2020
  • Accepted 27 July 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.102.064415

©2020 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Kexin Yang1,2, Kisung Kang2,3, Zhu Diao2,4,5,†, Manohar H. Karigerasi2,3, Daniel P. Shoemaker2,3, André Schleife2,3,6, and David G. Cahill1,2,3,*

  • 1Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
  • 2Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
  • 3Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
  • 4Department of Physics, AlbaNova University Center, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
  • 5Department of Physics, Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, Florida 32307, USA
  • 6National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA

  • *d-cahill@illinois.edu
  • zhu.diao@famu.edu

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Issue

Vol. 102, Iss. 6 — 1 August 2020

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